"affecting the Stoic philosophy"

Marjie Bloy Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore

gentlemen
in the cotton trade at Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy —
Stoics were followers of the Greek philosopher Zeno who taught in the porch
(stoa poikilê) of the Agora in Athens. A Stoic is one who practises repression
of emotion, indifference to pleasure or pain, and patient endurance. The cotton
merchants in Manchester were at the mercy of the economic conditions of the
time, over which they had no control. By the 1820s they were opposing the Corn
Laws, however. It is not true that de Quincey was "a stranger in Manchester":
he was born and brought up there.